


Dust to Dust

by alianora



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Not A Fix-It, making things worse in new and different ways, someone give me back my heart
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-04 01:51:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14582310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alianora/pseuds/alianora
Summary: Short fics in all the ways things in Infinity War could have happened.Some fix things. Some don't.Additional tags added as new chapters added.





	1. The Reality Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanos fixes Steve.

Thanos looked down at the man holding his gauntleted arm with amusement. The man was fighting to keep Thanos from using his left arm, but it was a matter of simplicity itself to swat him away.

The stones hummed in Thanos’ mind - he could feel each one sitting inside him, showing him possibilities and maybes and would-have-beens. 

Thanos laughed, reaching for the man knocked aside. Thanos collared him with little effort and lifted him off his feet to croon into his face. “Little man, you seem to have lost your grip on what your own reality should look like.” 

The man’s eyes widened as Thanos tightened his grip. The Reality Stone sparked in the gauntlet as this man - this _Steve Rogers_ \- started to scream. 

Thanos watched dispassionately as the man’s face started to change, losing definition and even size. The man’s hands were desperately wrapped around the wrist that held him aloft and Thanos smiled as the grip weakened. For a moment, the man looked bent and wrong, parts of him oddly proportioned as his body _shifted_. 

Thanos pulled him closer - the man’s breathing was loud and labored as Thanos examined his work. “This is what you should have been all along,” Thanos told him. “I merely set things right again.” 

He dropped the twitching man into the dirt and walked away, ignoring another human sliding to his knees beside the corrected Steve Rogers - now much smaller and paler and turning blue as he gasped for every wheezing breath. 

“Steve? Stevie? You remember how to do this - just stay calm. _MEDIC!_ ” 

This was the burden he had placed on himself. To set things right. To correct what is wrong. 

Steve Rogers was _wrong_. He should never have been made more than the frail creature he had been. 

“Steve, _please._ It’s just asthma, buddy, we’ve handled this before. Stevie, come on! Breathe!" 

The panicked voice faded behind Thanos as he strode on to correct all the other problems in the galaxy. 

END


	2. Women Gonna Fix - Darcy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The men got them into this mess..

Darcy called Jane, because what else do you do when your whole entire idea of what science was capable of literally just turned into dust and left you sitting in the middle of what had been a job interview without anyone left to interview you?

She hung up before it rang through, because she had to have a panic attack at the idea that the dust covering her face and hands was the stern faced man who had spent the last ten minutes frowning at her lack of experience in Xcel.

She managed to stumble her shaky way out of the building, following shocked voices and the occasional scream. The roads were a mess - cars were sitting empty at a uselessly cycling red light and there were several piled up in the middle of the closest intersection.

And there were people. People wandering, looking as dazed as Darcy felt. She passed a woman whispering “please, please, please,” to herself as she turned in circles and clutched a kid's backpack to her chest. Darcy was mildly shocked to realize she was still holding her own phone, and with trembling hands she scrolled through her contacts list, calling one after another as the battery bar slid down from 45% to 0%.

Darcy kept trying different numbers - her mom, Jane, a booty call number listed as ONLY IF YOURE DRUNK - until the phone died in her hand. She didn’t know if all of the lines were down because of the disintegration problem or from everyone being..um..disintegrated. Her brain very helpfully steered her away from that terrifying thought before she could look at it too deeply, so she took a deep breath and started walking in the professional looking heels she was deeply regretting wearing. Her next job interview was going to be set somewhere she could wear sweatpants and possibly survival gear.

She wasn’t that far from Stark Tower. Someone had to be left there. Someone there would know what had happened and what to do.

Someone had to be there.

Someone.

END


	3. Oxygen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony goes home. Can be read as a sequel to chapter 1: Reality Stone.

Tony had made it back to Earth - it had taken a few days to figure out how to fix Seven-of-Nine’s ship and get it moving again. Smurfette was pretty pissed and Tony wasn’t doing so hot himself, but fixing stuff had been Tony’s way of repressing his feelings for longer than was healthy, so to Earth they went with her muttering seething insults about Thanos and Starkid and his team. It made for an uncomfortable trip, but Tony had been through worse commutes so he ignored it as much as he could. 

Showing up in New York was a shitshow, with military screaming into their comms about “identifying yourselves” and having “declared a state of emergency.” No shit, really? Tony had never been so grateful to settle down on Stark Tower - or as “down” as the ship actually went, as it was more of a hover - and he had no problem admitting that he had actually hit his knees in relief when the door of the tower opened to Pepper’s frightened face. 

Pepper had been in sporadic touch with the others, who were in Wakanda, and seeing as Tony really wanted to play with all of their tech and get out from underfoot of the chaos that was the United States government, he packed up as many of his toys as he could and they headed to the Land of Vibranium. 

Bruce had hesitated over the comms when Tony asked about everybody else. “It’s…it’s not good, Tony. We lost a lot of people.” 

Tony had swallowed and braced himself, wishing he had a drink. “Who’s left?” 

“Me. Natasha. Thor. Rhodes.” Bruce hesitated, “Steve, but…” 

“But what? What happened to Rogers? Is he alive?” 

“Tony,” Bruce sounded hesitant. “It’s…complicated. He’s alive, but..” 

Then, of course the comms went out, and Tony had no idea what happened to Rogers. Maybe he was unconscious. Or he’d fallen into the freezer trying to get ice cream and had managed to turn himself back into a popsicle. 

Tony had bigger things to think about than the fact his team had been…whatevered, and he still had all these other things to not think about, so he shoved all of those things into a neat box in his brain, helpfully labeled it _NOPE_ and went on his way. 

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting when they landed and he walked into the Wakandan palace, but he walked right past him before doubling back because _what._

Leaning over a maps table with that familiar stubborn tilt to his chin, was Captain America. 

In..miniature? 

Rogers looked like he’d lost 200 pounds and a foot off his height. HHe was skinny and pale and weirdly blueish around his lips. Behind him was a what Tony assumed passed as a wheelchair in Wakanda and an oxygen tank that had tubing running snaked across the floor and over Roger’s weirdly bony shoulders into a cannula fitted into mini-Cap’s nose. 

“Stark,” the shrunken Rogers said, nodding in acknowledgment. There was a disturbing wheeze to his speaking, and looking more closely, Tony could tell that Rogers was basically using the table to hold himself up. 

“Uh.” Tony said. 

Tiny-Cap’s lips quirked as Tony continued to stare. “Thanos decided to ”fix“ things in more ways than one. This,” he gestured to his miniaturized self, “is what I look like without the serum.” 

“I don’t remember any stories about you being on oxygen and in a chair.” Tony stepped closer and abruptly realized that little Rogers barely came up to his chin. “Pretty sure my dad would’ve mentioned that.” 

Steve waved it away, “I’m fine.” 

“He is not fine.” Natasha appeared out of nowhere, as she had the bad habit of doing. She didn’t bother looking at Rogers before focusing her attention on Tony. “The wheels and the tank are because the shock of being shrunk caused him to have a heart attack, and the asthma isn’t helping him actually take in enough O2. The doctors said he shouldn’t even be out of bed.” 

She glared at Steve, who raised his eyebrows and shrugged. 

“The heart attack was new,” he admitted, “but the rest of this is stuff I had to deal with my whole life before the serum. I have things to do.” 

“The universe to save?” Tony asked. 

Steve, small and puny, flashed a grin that was all teeth, “Shit to avenge.” 

END


	4. Dust in the Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Half of all sentient life, randomly selected.

Thanos only had a moment after he snapped his fingers to revel in his victory.

The slight smile of triumph on his face fell away as he reached for the ax still embedded in his chest. Puzzled, he looked down when he was unable to close his fingers around the handle.

The destruction was to be random. Half of all the sentient life in the universe would be destroyed, and the other half would be able to prosper.

Thanos had thought he would prosper.

Thor, unthinking, reached out for Thanos as the Titan’s face grew alarmed at the nothingness moving rapidly up his shoulder

“What?” He said, almost laughing in disbelief, but if he was speaking to himself or to the god standing by, Thor was unsure.

Thanos raised his hand to snap again, but it was too late - there wasn’t enough of him left.

Thor sank to his knees as the gauntlet crumbled before his eyes.

There was nothing left of Thanos. Or of the gauntlet.

Thor scrabbled at the ground to look for the Infinity Stones, sifting desperately through the dirt and ash as screams and cries of loss echoed around him on the battlefield.

Thor ran his hand over every rock he could find. He dug into the dirt beneath him. He uprooted weeds, but there was nothing.

The Infinity Stones were gone. Disintegrated with Thanos and the gauntlet. And with them went any hope to restore the millions and millions of lives that had just been snuffed out.

END


	5. Slip Through My Fingers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Steve?_

A shudder went through the crowd surrounding Thanos and the guy who just axed him in the chest, and with horror, Bucky realized that it hadn’t worked. They hadn’t made it in time.

Everything stopped for a moment.

Both armies seemed to be holding their breath to see what would happen.

Steve was struggling to his feet, dirt covering his face and blood on his chin and it was so familiar Bucky nearly laughed.

A small sound beside him caught Bucky’s attention and he turned as he saw one of the soldier-things dissolve into nothing.

“Steve?” Bucky tried to call out to him, but the word caught in his throat.

Steve was looking at him now, the same shock and panic Bucky felt reflected on Steve’s face.

Bucky took a step forward, then another, and as Steve’s eyes widened with fear, Bucky dropped his gun and ran.

Steve reached out for him, mouth open. Bucky was only a few fingertips away.

And then he was falling forward, looking straight at Bucky the whole time, and Bucky was there and too late.

It was so much worse than his nightmares.

Around him were people screaming - in shock and in pain and dying and disappearing, and there was Bucky on his knees with nothing left of Steve Rogers but handfuls of dirt. Bucky’s hands shook and he tightened his fingers, metal and flesh, around the dust in his palms.

“Steve,” he whispered. “Please, I can’t do this. You can’t do this to me.”

The ash shifted in the slight breeze of Bucky's breath.

“ _Steve!_ ”

At some point, Bucky realized he was screaming, and then the others were approaching with shock and horror on their faces but Bucky couldn’t stop. He couldn’t. He lashed out at them as they approached, his sight too blurry to know who was there, and his ears too full of his own cracked voice.

Bucky couldn’t speak anymore. He couldn’t find any words other than Steve’s name as he folded forward onto the ground, holding two handfuls of ash close to his chest.

 

END


End file.
